


Signal Lights

by completelyhopeless



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Community: comment_fic, Gen, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 03:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2717660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha doesn't use lights at the window. She has good reasons not to, but then she also has a reason to need them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signal Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> For the prompt: _[MCU, Natasha, light in the window](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/558611.html?thread=78759443#t78759443)_
> 
> Expanded on the original. It's still not what I would have done if I did it right, but it's better.
> 
> I still hate the second person, though.

* * *

When you're on assignment, a light in the window is a target for a sniper. It's attention you don't need or want. It's a signal to someone, your side or theirs, and a spy knows better than to keep any light in any window.

When you are a little girl who remembers only fire, you do not want a light in your window to remind you of it.

When all your world is crumbling around you and you are waiting for your partner to return, you put the light in the window, hoping it will be seen and lead the lost home.

* * *

Natasha didn't understand why children play with lanterns in their window, why they use flashlights at night. When she saw it the first time, she thought they must have been some part of the Red Room program because lights were not toys. They were signals. They were how she communicated with her handlers, how she sent messages and received them. Other people had forgotten Morse code. She had not. Sometimes it was a better way of communicating than any modern means.

Sometimes she got tempted to tease Captain Rogers with a flashlight, to use it either as a signal or as a game. She figured he was the kind of kid that played with them and someone who used them in war. She never did, though, because she knew she was not the only one with a reason to dislike the reminders of the lights.

* * *

Her parents burned in a fire.

That was one memory she believed was real among all of the false ones.

She remembered having a candle once, and like many children did, like something out of movies she would not see until she was older, she placed that flickering candle in the window.

The flame was small, but it was still a fire.

She put it out while screaming and hoping her handlers wouldn't think she was weak.

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D. was H.Y.D.R.A.

She exposed the secrets to the world. She gave away all her covers and those of many others, and she had to figure that was why friends stayed away, why some of them died. That was her. That was more red in her ledger in an attempt to do right. Steve, she thought, might never know the gray areas in between right and wrong, the place she lived, but let him keep that innocence. Someone needed to. The world needed heroes, and he could stay one.

She never had been one, so she could accept the blame instead. And she did, at that senate hearing.

Afterward, she let Steve go on being a hero, chasing down his ghosts. She went to find a cover that she could use, and when she did, she settled into a safe house. She knew the risk, knew the danger of her choice, but she put up a light in the window, hoping it would lead Clint back to her, that she hadn't gotten her partner killed.


End file.
